August 20, 2008

Smart boards providing new ways to interact

By The Lennox Independent Online, www.lennoxonline.com
Thursday, September 11, 2008

The “smart boards” in the Lennox School District classrooms are from PolyVision. The touch-sensitive, interactive whiteboards are part computer monitor, part giant mouse pad, part whiteboard and part sketchpad. Teachers can project a lesson, navigate a website, advance slides, write notes and save the screen for posting… all while leading a classroom full of energetic students, said PolyVison’s website. The interactive whiteboards work with a computer and a projector.

Lennox School District introduced the boards to the district last year, putting them in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms. Smartboard software makes it possible for teachers to create rich content just for their students. Kristi Koltz teaches fourth grade at Lennox Elementary. She became familiar with smart board technology when she was working as a long-term substitute teacher in a Sioux Falls classroom.

“I was so excited when I found out we were getting them here,” she said.

“The interactive whiteboards really seem to hold the students’ attention in the classrooms, students actually get upset when the teachers don’t use them,” said the District’s Technology Director, Jeremy Luden.

The students backed him up on that comment.

“Smart boards make school more fun,” said Ethan Cinco, a Lennox fourth grader.

“It’s awesome,” Mason Sluis agreed.

“I think the students get smarter from the smart board,” added classmate Amanda Timmerman.

The boards cost $1800 per board plus the cost of the LCD projector. “This year we now have them in all second through fifth, and one classroom in the middle school,” said Luden.

Although it takes some training to get started, Koltz said that if you can use a computer, you can use the interactive board. “The more you play with it, the better you get,” said Koltz.

At the beginning of the year, Koltz held a smart board training class for the teachers that lasted about two and one-half hours. The students are fast learners—they quickly learned how to use the boards and are really enjoying them.

Koltz tries to make sure the kids are on it as much as she is.

“The interactive aspect is so cool,” said Kathy Poppe, also a Lennox fourth grade instructor. “It is so amazing—it just grabs their attention.”

Koltz demonstrated how she uses the interactive board to project her lessons, teach students about angles and math, create graphs, read books, and how she used it in her lesson on whales—pulling up whale sounds.

It was easy to see why the students enjoy it so much.

“I couldn’t teach without it,” she said.

Next year the boards will be added in the kindergarten and first grade
classrooms.

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